That Which Cannot Hold
by Lawr
Summary: Sequel to One Day More. Javert escapes from Purgatory, haunted by a twisted Fantine and loathe if he'll take refuge with Valjean and Cosette. Filled with cliches? Probably. Even so... *holds coffee cup out* Save-A-Fanfictioner would love donations.
1. The World Turned Upside Down

**That Which Cannot Hold**

**Authour's Note: Well hi again! This is a sequel to One Day More, a story that conveniently cropped up in my head when I'm supposed to be studying for finals. Isn't it remarkable how that happens? Anywhoos, I introduce Fantine into Javert's little epic tale...and she is HEAVILY OOC. If that makes you uncomfortable, well…put your big girl pants on. I promise you'll understand her. Eventually. **

**Remember, reviews are like those little sparkly plastic rainbow 'Happy Birthday' thingies speared into the tops of those delicious factory-produced cupcakes. **

_Purgatory_

Javert slowly awoke to the cold feeling of-well, nothingness. If he had to take a logical guess, it would be that he was lying with a gritty, rigid pillow of dirt under his cheek, scrubbing uncomfortably against the half-healed scrapes his little rendezvous with the Seine had given him before. _Before…what?_ he thought muzzily, slowly climbing to his knees and stretching his neck and arms gingerly. The smog before him stung at his eyes. _Damn it, why can't I stay conscious of my surroundings for more than a day, _he began to grumble to himself, and then stopped cold in his thoughts, a dark heavy sail of dread snapping open in his stomach, a ship menacing and in wait.

_A day. I was given one more day with Valjean…_his eyes widened, straining to see past what his senses could not determine. His mind could not wrap itself around the fact-it _must_ be a fact, he thought, he had known of his fate as only the dying can-that he was dead and lying in what seemed to be a no-more-superior pile of dirt than any bordering France's rivers. Well_, _he thought stoically, getting to his feet and kicking a pebble gloomily, it could be a lot worse, as Heaven goes.

A voice started at this thought, startling him to move reflexively for the beating-stick ever present at his waist. Astonishingly, it was not there. He could fend off no angels here.

"And what makes you so sure, Inspector, that this is Heaven that you've reached?" The voice seemed to echo inside his mind, laughingly, tauntingly. It was neither a man nor a woman's, Javert's favourite kind of voice. To know the gender of the voice of the authority addressing you was to have an advantage. Javert was polite and canny as expected when it came to women of class and wealth, but he was no gentleman to those who did crimes against or threw the names of their family down in dishonor. The Inspector wobbled to a standing position, and his surroundings swirled and melted into what looked to be a lowly-lit interior of a room, with a polished wood fireplace flickering and alive and throwing flames unto the walls. The taste of sweet smoke and ember was cloying as it coated Javert's throat. The speaker was not facing him, in a high-backed deep-red armchair plush and luxurious against the full-windowed walls, dusty glass looking down from a great height on a dark factory floor. Javert's heart sank as he recognized the factory of M. Madeleine, or Valjean as he had not known, only this office was mustier and lit more lowly, with a scent of dirty linen and wine heavy and damp upon Javert's breath. The speaker's legs were crossed, and Javert could note that it was in fact a woman who spoke: the legs were half-decently covered by the hem of a black dress, but she left some amount showing, though seemingly shrouded in a tight, black, sheer material that the astounded Inspector could only describe as a second skin. The legs unfolded from their cross and turned the chair around towards him, revealing a woman dressed in mourning, a tilted hat with a spiderweb-like veil drawn across her face.

"Hello, Javert," she said, in a voice lower than Javert had known her to have. He recognized the blonde hair, though, ragged and unruly-curled from its hurried cut, and he recognized the black gap of a missing tooth as she let a grin slip through her reddened lips. The black dress was severely buttoned all the way up her throat, but the air she was giving off was no different than what she had been in real life. Prostitution, he thought disgustedly. It can't leave a soul.

"Fantine," he acknowledged with a curt nod of his head, reasoning she must hold a position of some power if she were to be addressing him as such. She smiled as he said so, playing with a necklace in between her gloved fingers. Javert recognized his locket with another heart-rending lurch, unhappy to be so out of control with his own fate. Fantine studied it, watching him out of the corner of one heavily lashed eye, watching his eyes stray to the windows.

"I wouldn't think so poorly of me, Inspector, any more," she murmured softly, studying the picture of the mother Javert had not known pressed into her palm. She snapped it shut, and Javert abruptly flinched. Shaking his head, he opened his mouth to speak. Fantine raised an eyebrow. Taken aback by this gesture of contempt, Javert pressed on. All formalities were disposed of.

"Where am I? Why are you here?" Javert spoke coldly and quietly, his usual expectations for questions like who, and where, and why. Fantine laughed, a sound chilling in the dead, sluggish air, and she gestured down at the factory workers, as small as rats on the floor below.

"You're with the people you belong with, my dear Inspector," she said, never varying her slow, low voice, never breaking the stoic, bland look on her face. Javert found himself near to being frustrated, especially since he understood now that she was mocking his demeanor in life and that he must now play the worried convict waiting for his sentence. But true to his word, Javert just blinked and waited for further instruction.

Fantine sighed and played with the clasp of the necklace, slipping it around her slender throat with red finger-marks still clearly visible from where Javert had gripped her neck the night she died. Her heavy-lidded eyes met his, boldly, and he noticed how remarkably blue they must have been before they faded and became a worn yellow-grey.

"Ma'am, I demand to know why I am here and whom I can consult who can refer me to a way home," Javert spoke softly but sternly, hands behind his back. His buttoned-up coat to the neck rivaled Fantine's own dress, a woman's mockery of the law. Fantine let loose another secretive smile, and her eyes slid to a point behind Javert's shoulder.

"Sometimes we land in places where we don't know what we've done to deserve it, and, my dear, there is never an easy way home," Fantine said, watching lazily as two men in white took Javert by the shoulders, the man shocked and furious through the cracks in his composure. She watched complacently as he tried to fight them off, but they collared him in an iron clamp so similar to those of the chain gangs he'd watched over with such pride. She watched as he pretended to deflate in acceptance, but, as he slumped, he tried Valjean's old move of reaching for a chair to beat at his attackers and was easily bested. She watched as, in punishment, the men wrenched at the iron chains around his neck, bringing him to his knees to be dragged, leaving him gasping and with angry pink marks much like on Fantine's own throat.

Fantine turned the old stereo in the room up, a remarkable anachronistic invention allowed when you were visiting an old friend in Purgatory. She listened as the man's rich, melancholy voice crooned about his kind of town, letting it wash over her, drowning out the anguished cries of the newer victims and the dead, cold silence of those who were old and who waited. It would be a long wait for Javert, she mused, sitting at one job dully in the ash-laden factory while his case pended. A grin came to her mouth as one came to a cats' jaws, and she coughed a bitter laugh and flicked the ends of her cigarette into the fire.

_Everyone gets their redemption. _


	2. As I Stare Into a Void

**Authour's Note: Heh heh. Studying is for LOSERS. **rocks back and forth in dark room with laptop covered in Les Mis propaganda** Therefore, I'm updating this sooper fast so I can ignore it and go 'study' without leaving you with a little more view of Purgatory. :D (that's a lie…writing les mis stuff is kind of my vice.) As always, thank you for reading/reviewing! And I hope to see you all after a couple B-minuses magically make their way into my life.**

_As I Stare Into a Void_

_Clang, clank, cling. Clang, clank, cling. _The noises registered dully in Javert's brain as his tired hands worked in front of him, his back blistering in the heat from the fires, the flickering light loathe to cover his entire working space. His hands were grey, and his fingers had developed a tremor over-over how long? Javert's muddled mind could not make out how long it had been. He remembered only the shock of realizing he was dead in the factory office so cruelly mimicked to look like Valjean's had, and that bright-water shock had been the last of his feelings for what seemed like many, many days. He had fallen into the lull that every other bearded, sullen grey man working on this level had, a level without voices except one.

The woman in black. Fantine. The corner of Javert's emaciated mouth stretched upwards in the semblance of a maddened smile. Here, Fantine controlled the workers, controlled her mindless policemen in white who punished those who did not work. Policemen. _Garde/hommes._ It was a contradiction. Here, now, Javert had seen it was all a game, pretending to be in charge of a Law that could be bent to fit any twisted constrictions. Fantine's smoke-throttled voice echoed through the emptying corners of Javert's mind, and as the cogs slowed, thoughts of anywhere else slowed, thoughts of himself and what he had stood for. It didn't matter, really, now, he thought dreamily and dully, tired grey hands pounding link after link into the chains connecting iron collars. Irony had caught and ensnared him. Here he made collars and chains for the respectable men who had upheld the law, and, in turn, killed so many.

Some small voice stirred through the cobwebs of Javert's mind, pushed aside the dusty curtains. It sounded like a child from far off, impatient and crude. Javert sought to close it out, in favour of the echoing, listless voice of Fantine as she sung.

"_My kind of town…my kind of town…my kind of people, too…people who… who smile…" _she broke off with a little giggle farther down the copper-smelted corridor. She swayed further down the hall, into Javert's eyesight at the very corner of his fogged-out vision. She cupped a bleary-eyed man's head in her hand, studying him and making him look her in the eyes. He tried to get back to his work, but her nails closed in, dug furrows into his cheeks.

_Clang, clank, cling. _

"I remember smiling. Do you?" she asked pleasantly, laughing a little like a little girl. The laughter came breathy and bitter through the black absent space where her teeth once were. The man tried to escape her, half-heartedly, not looking at her face, and Fantine frowned, pulling his face closer by his hair.

"What's the matter? Am I not pretty enough to take? Does it bother you, _Monsieur_, that I sold myself for this place? …Nothing to say to defend yourself, dear? …_Nothing…at all_," she said disgustedly, throwing his hair down and wandering closer to Javert, who was not alarmed. Fantine went on these rampages regularly, but this one struck a chord strangely in his heart, though he could not remember why. The child's voice came back to him again, insistently, as he worked.

_Look at your hands, Javert, _it said quietly, the voice of an older girl or maybe a very young boy. _Your job, the irons. _

Javert looked down: indeed, he was working, the same job he had before. Clasping chain after chain to iron bolts in the collars. He forgot why this bothered him; he went back to the routine of his job. _Clang, clank, cling. _My kind of town. _Clang, clank, cling._

"Do you know who put out my teeth, who tore up my dresses?" Fantine was whispering intimately, somewhere near his ears and yet a thousand miles away. A hand pressed demurely to her chest. Her voice dropped to a last breaths' sound, and he felt it more than heard it. "It was you, Inspector Javert. You may not have wielded the scissors or put the snow down my front or knocked the teeth out of my head, but you sentenced me to a life of these things."

_Javert. _The voice was different now, kindly and amused. _Look at what you're doing. _

Javert tossed his head in its collar, frustrated that he couldn't get away from the voice of the woman or the voices echoing inside his head. He knew, damn it, he _knew_ he had caused the twisted collapse of the woman Fantine, he knew that she was only mocking him but how it affected him every moment as a separately delivered blow. His only refuge was in his work. He looked down, concentrated on doing the very best he could to make the chains link up-

He heard the voice now very clearly, an icy precision with each word.

_They wouldn't chain up men who have no chance of escape. _

This served for Javert as a waking-salt for the weary grey fog his mind had been in. Instantly alert, he surveyed the area for a door, a barred-in passageway. He found none. There were only the stairs to the office, and even then there were none. Heavy stone walls were all that he found. The light, he thought in earnest, the light must be coming from somewhere. The small flutter of hope in his stomach did not last-of course; it was coming from the iron-fires, the welding-fires, the fires to provide that dismal bit of light. Disheartened, the dust began to settle gently and so slowly over his mind again, but the children would not let it be.

_What happens to you when you die in Hell? _Gavroche questioned him laughingly, only an echo away. Javert snapped fully alert again, repeating the child's joke and the name like a mantra or a key.

Fantine noticed this change, and she looked at him questioningly. Javert noticed the innocent light had not quite so faded out of her cornflower eyes.

"What's wrong, my love?" she murmured, and Javert in her eyes again saw the girl of only twenty or twenty-two, just a child thrown into a world she could not hold. It was that that set her apart-her eyes. Widely-spaced, haunted, yellowed and purpled around the edges and so light-blue her ricepaper soul could show through. Praying on this and focusing on this natural trust, he worked fingers beneath his irons, trying to get at the tightly-buttoned coat collar he'd been so proud to keep fastened up.

"Now I know I have finally bested you," he thought he heard her murmur, reaching for the keys.

Was it for a laugh? Was it for the irony, for the constant ridicule, for the stab at his pride? A last bit of pity? Was it because she knew he could not escape? Javert did not care. Either way, Fantine loosened the collar enough for him to reach his hands through to unbutton his collar, but as he knew she knew, he slipped through and lurched for the kiln-flames. Unhesitatingly, he threw open the black-grated door to one, teetering on the edge of the flames of Hell.

_Let's find out, Gavroche, _he thought to himself, letting a half-smile slip through as he fell into flame and sword.


	3. You Must Think Me Mad

**Authour's note: Haven't updated because of finals, but they're OVER AND NOW IT'S SUMMAHTIME, PUNKS. :D for a week anyway. Anywhoo, here's another chapter of this. I used to know where this was going, but no one seems to know what's going on this chapter. Feel free to artistically interpret as Heaven, Hell, or…or…ramblings from eating two Hershey's bars and a pack of peanut M&Ms before this. **

**REVIEWS ARE LIKE THOSE TIMES WHEN YOUR HISTORY TEACHER WALKS PAST YOU AND DROPS TEN DOLLARS AND YOU SPEND IT ON COOKIES AND STUFF AND THEN YOU FEEL LIKE CHARLIE IN THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. …I dunno, it sounded deep at the time. **

**3 and cookies for anyone who reads! :P**

_You Must Think Me Mad_

Logically, Javert thought, killing yourself by throwing yourself into flames in Purgatory should lead one way or another to Hell. He woke to find himself in France.

But was it France? he wondered dreamily, getting to his feet with the help of a well-placed wooden coat-hanger that was only partially submerged in the sewers. It seemed to be. He struggled to get up, but found himself pressed to the ground again, where he could hear the scattering of fire and thunder under the streets. It seemed in this version of France, up meant sideways. No matter how hard he tried to get up, he was reduced to a low crawl. No, he thought, frowning to himself, up was the way the buttons go on the coats, Ira, one-two, one-two. Did no one ever teach you, child? Did no one ever care?

One-two, one-two, Javert, he thought callously to himself as he looked over the tops of the stooped old-man buildings clutching their walls to their chests, wheezing in to fill their distended ribs. From his sideways vantage point, the tops of the cottages and the townhouses were leeched of all colour, parchment-pale and bled white, and then filled back up again, groaning to the brim, with the haze of broken gunmetal souls. Fire was billowing from the tops of the cottages like factories, engulfing him in a wave of mechanical _clang, clank, cling_ of torrid breath belching smoke thickly from its jaws. Javert went to steady himself on the coat-hanger, but it had disappeared into the swollen belly of the sewer-water.

No, no, not good at all, little one, he thought to himself, alarmed. I never wrote it out what it was I must have. I never had written-I never was writing-what I had meant to, before, before had I known-?.

Javert braced himself against the sudden tide of the foaming river at his feet, sloshing desperately to the nearest house in that alley of Rue Plumet. For that was what it was-or was-or had been, before the sun had been replaced by a wheeling copper cog and the moon by the greying maple skin of an unfamiliar turned-away face. Her neck was what caught his eye, he remembered. That and the gold glittering there, on what was so dirty and unloved a canvas.

"Help me!" the cry tore from his lips before he remembered to be silent. Never had he uttered a word of help before, but here, he was torn away from all literal boundaries.

torn? /torn the letter/

His boots soon became too waterlogged to run in; he took them off, leaving them in the gorged alleyways of the streets for some sewer-rat to come and prosper from. Luckily the buildings, at least, seemed to be on his side: they bowed creakily from his path as if from a great legion of heroes. The only one unbending was the square-stoned house of La Maire. But even that had to, he knew, he told the child caustically. Nothing could escape the Law.

The Law. /Up? Up. Up and about. About the Law? Not up, was ascertained.

Up was for Heaven, and Heaven was for liars.

for liars and liars are for the law/

A looming, frothing wave overtook Javert from behind, pulling him into its gunmetal jaws, and his lungs tore open for air, he fought for anything. Only mildew and scraggles of seaweed and hair made it past his lips. Disgusted, his head broke the water and he spat what had whipped him across the face into the churning mud, gasping in great lungfuls of air as though God had taunted him with no other freedom. Copper blood, was it, he knew the taste well-but also iron-water, well-water, water for the poor-johns who knew no more. But before he could struggle to the shelter of the structured buildings, the water drank him back in again, thicker and warmer like a blanket or blood. It was almost nice, this, he told the expectant child. He could close his eyes and pretend it was Christmas, and he could be alone.

"Help me help you. Sh, shhh, don't make a fuss of it."

And Javert was pulled into a canoe, a canoe that was a ship, a dilapidated ship of dreams that rode the waters pulling through the curtain of rain. The curtain of rain of gunshots, he knew, as he sailed past the lettered doors. There were supposed to be addresses carved into the mantles, weren't there, weren't they supposed to? Otherwise how would he know who they were? Instead, names were on ballot-slips, they fell for him to help him guide his way through the fog. An oar was speared out into the water, decisively, and the child rocked the boat so.

the law is for liars and iron its jaw/

Get out, get out, I told you, child, it's too dangerous, Javert told the little soaked boy in the striped vest and too-big greatcoat. Ira, you've been here too long, your mother will worry. But his twisted mind-oh, the wretched man at the mud-bank! -Javert could not stop to save the man with the tendrils of hair plastered to his soulless cheeks. Encased in a coat that would ultimately drown him, the fool. Javert was sailing in a land of fools. And all wanted him to save them, didn't they? Well, Javert thought, not even Ira could be saved, not even the boy at the barricades.

/barricades

There was a gate, a black-iron gate entwined with white flowers, and Javert tried to moor his ship at the stones, but the gate was so far away, and the black iron twisted into bars. Bars, he thought dreamily, I once understood why they were like so, but now I understand nothing. Nothing. Nothing-this is nothing, calm down, man, it's just a dream, it's just a nightmare, oh fools of fools, the devil's possessed me now

"Stop moving so, Javert, you'll be hurt."

Could it be again, the woman Fantine? Javert barked a giggle, a wheeze of his throat to expel the seaweed and saltwater. Looking out for others, the kindly whore. Oh the women, they were everywhere here, it must be hell then without the white, they were all dressed in rags with a bit of red on them they must have come from their mouths. Taking care of her men, the world-turned-upside-down-the man had heard somewhere there was a festival like that, the man who was his father, and what kind of family goes there? Who wants to trade kings for peasants when when you are king you can have all the pawns line-up for you in the garden-? Javert went unconvincingly to move the ship out of dock, but someone else had captained it for the moment he lost

lost her? had he lost her? had he seen the last of the woman Fantine and her terrible, terrible

"Terrible…" Javert wheezed.

"Sh, Javert, I know," Valjean responded, looking with sad eyes out onto the tranquil blue night.


	4. And If You Fall

**A/N: Wow…I haven't worked on this in a while…I almost forgot about it. But when you're stuck in US History over the summer, there's nothing like history to remind you of epic stories!...wait…that sounded better in my head. **

**Enjoy and remember, reviews are better than lemonade and tomato-mozarella-avocado Paninis on a summer day. **

_And If You Fall_

The girl was back. What was her name? Eponine. Ah, that was it. Why did she plague him so? Javert thought Heaven was the place you went to get rid of your earthly burdens. Maybe it was his lips calling her name that kept sending her back.

She was cross-legged, brushing out her long, tangled hair, paying him no mind. Javert sat across from her, watching. They were in a grey room with one mirror behind Eponine, where Javert could see his own stunned reflection but none from the girl. So there he sat, watching her, taking his mind off his own face, that which he no longer recognized.

Soon Eponine finished catching the rattiness out of her hair, and she smoothed it out, long and sleek and brown. She caught it up with a pale white ribbon she would have never used before, and only then did it seem she caught sight of Javert. Her hands went to her neck-a gold locket gleamed there, a golden standard against her tarnished, dirty skin. He stared. She stared back.

"What, you want me to take your hand and put you on your way to 'eaven then?" she said, disgruntled, a low, rattled voice making her older and boyish at the same time. For a moment, Javert had been reminded of Cosette, with the smooth hair and sweet silence, the innocence, the necklace against a young throat. But it was not. It seemed Javert only deserved the urchins of the streets he so longed to sweep clean. Eponine knew this-her plain eyes flashed with hatred in her face before she drew her eyelashes over them.

"Hate is not something to harbour here," she muttered, seeming to recite. Javert stared. Eponine stared back, the insolent, bold stare of the wronged. Finally she sighed and pulled her tatted skirts past her ankles to get up, one awkward long bound upwards and there, she was standing.

"What do you want from me?" she said, still eyes locked with his, freckles dusted across wasted cheekbones. Again, as if not thinking, she put her hand to her neck, absentmindedly. Her dirty nails skimmed the locket. "This? This isn't mine."

_Then whose? _Javert wanted to cry out. He wanted to shake her thin shoulders until she told him, until she understood-maybe just to feel something defined, to convince himself he wasn't crazy.

Eponine smiled, a different one than before. White teeth replaced by missing ones, a gold in the back and framed by red lipstick.

_No, _Javert said violently, backing up and away and out-sideways.

_Yes, _she said, a purr. Black-shadowed eyes and red lips. Her eyes were so blackened; it was like they'd seen Hell.

"What do you want?" Javert gasped, unsure and wide-eyed, staring at the face before him. She smiled back, coolly. _You know what I want-I want my redemption. _

She smiled. Her eyes faded, to be replaced by grey. Her hair was hidden under a netting of black and shadows. The music twirled through his memories again, the low, sweet voice, like listening to smoke, being sang out of a golden trumpet.

"I want you to listen," she said. But it wasn't her. No, it was not his voice, was it?

"Listen?" Javert said, ungainly. The words struggled to leave his mouth—he was choking on dust and dread, they had similar flavours.

"Yes, Javert, listen." the voice was wry and amused. "Not something you do well."

Javert sat up and blinked. Colours melted slowly under his eyelids, swirling back into their original places. He looked around-he was in a room lit bright with daytime and perfumed by summer-soaked air and flowers, window thrown open to coax any breeze drifting by. The walls were wood-paneled to about his waist, maroon higher than that, and there was both a cherry-wood night-table and bureau neatly placed in the room. A painting was hung carefully on the wall. Javert recognized a feminine touch in the decorations-he looked across, to the garden, where a faint gate hung deeply with white flowers was discernable in the heavy air. There was no doubting it-this had been where he died. Cosette. Valjean. The names that had been hopeful, even peaceful, to him were now back to being bitter on his tongue. Before he could dread looking the last place, though, for he knew Valjean to be waiting for him there, the face of the young barricade-boy Valjean had saved took up his view instead.

"Hello, Monsieur," he said, eyes creasing with worry at the condition Javert was in. Javert was sure he looked a fool-his coat, he noted dryly, had been to Hell and back. Or was it Hell here? So far, Javert mused with a certain determination, Fantine's reminding him of where he had felt the only love he'd ever felt was not making him feel in the least bit hellish. Love, he remembered, was an imagined thing painted over the scientific.

Marius came over to him again, sat in the chair by his bed. Javert refused to look at him. He felt perfectly healthy, just a bit tired, and there was no need for Valjean to baby-sit him. He decided to voice the feeling.

"Where's Valjean, then?" His voice, even to him, sounded tired and old and without a purpose. Marius looked up from the newspaper he was reading, put down a set of glasses Javert hadn't known he had.

"Valjean?" Marius said, a soft frown hinting at his young face. "You mean the mayor? He's not here. Why would he be? You're but a common man, sir, you've no need to see him." Marius looked closely at Javert's eyes, pulling the lids down to see if Javert was perhaps sick. Javert drew away from this touch, sharply. Him? Inspector Javert, a commoner? Thinking, he turned away from Marius for the moment. Again, he looked out the window, at the heavily-scented flowers. Then back to Marius's face, young and without a scar to show his age.

Marius set a black bag on Javert's bed, sorting through it halfheartedly, turning things over every so often.

"I'm sorry, sir, but there's not much I can do to help you," he said apologetically, "I've not handled things like you have before. You were shouting in your sleep when Monsieur le Maire brought you here. I handle physical injuries, not madness…I have no idea why he'd thought me useful." Pulling his brows together, Marius went to the window and looked out on the garden. Javert thought this over and decided to speak, carefully.

"I thought you were a lawyer…doesn't Cosette have something to say about this?"

Marius turned back, a blank look on his face. Half-confused, half-pleasant, as if to play along with an addled mind.

" No, sir. I went to college, I've never much had time for a woman…" he blushed at this, faintly, and Javert's stomach sank, horribly. Marius without Cosette meant Valjean without Marius, meant-meant-

_meant what?_

Marius readied his bag, straightened the sheets carefully, looked out the window again and sighed. It was obvious it was time for Javert to go. Dazed and a little confused, Javert stood, to find he was dressed in a plain white shirt and breeches instead of his proud coat and buttons.

_Where am I? _he thought, the lack of his uniform clothing upending him more than anything else did. Marius smiled to see him up, though somewhat bitterly.

"I'm sorry; I can't hold visitors," he said sadly, "Not even needy patients. My family abandoned my practice, you see, especially my grandfather." He turned to the door, to kindly open it, Javert supposed. "But if you need help, ask for the Maire. He never turns out a soul," he said as an afterthought, and Javert walked out, floating, dazed. In shock. The sunlight hit him like a gunshot.

The boy surely had enough money. Or had it come from Cosette and Valjean? Where _were_ they? Where was _he_? The streets felt unclean and unfamiliar to him: he felt defenseless and alone. At least before he'd had the security of his job. Did he still have it? He resolved to find out.

He was walking down Rue Noir when he spotted three street urchins, giggling, spots on their faces. If anyone was to know and fear his face, it was them. He strode over to them, trying to maintain his dignity, but they just kept giggling.

"Do you know who I am?"

The oldest one, a blonde boy with freckles and ears that stuck out, tried to maintain a solemn face as the other two dissolved into laughter behind him. The boy stood ramrod-straight, hands behind his back.

"Mister, if you don't know who you are, I din't take your mem'ries." He stared at Javert before laughing with the other two, insolently, uncaringly. All three found it enormously clever. Javert felt an uncanny emotion, something akin to anger or frustration, rising inside him. The nerve! He'd teach them a lesson-he'd show them the way of the Law-

"Monsieur, are you bothering those children?" someone spoke behind him, and Javert turned, still with his anger bubbling up under his skin, hair loosed and shirt untucked. It was a policeman, stoic and unforgiving. Javert went to explain himself, but the children got there first.

"Oh, yes, mister, he's really rattling us up," the oldest one said seriously, the younger two boys trying their best to look innocent. "Tried to steal our money. Our only one franc, that we'ved saved." Javert opened his mouth to correct about this outrage, but it was too late. A heavy blow with the beat-stick was dealt to his midsection, and Javert wheezed, crumbling to the ground. The children giggled. Another neat aim to the back of his head, and Javert nearly collapsed into darkness again. Instead, he only struck the ground, hard, with the heels of his palms. Still, he lay there, out of breath.

"That'll teach you, riff-raff, to steal from children," the man said smartly, and, with a neat twirl of his beat-stick to keep it parallel to his arm, he strode away, back ramrod-straight.

Javert listened to the children laugh as if from miles away, tasting the sodden grime of mud in his mouth, letting it soak through his white shirt. He understood. Not all the pieces of the puzzle were together, yet, but he was getting there-he was finally seeing what she'd done to him.

This wasn't Hell.

_No?_ she said, amused. She ground her pointed heel into his back.

_What is it?_

"Mmph," Javert answered, in agony, in shock. Oh, God. He _knew_.

_Tell me. _

It was what the world would have been if Fantine had not come crawling to him that day, begging him for mercy. If Javert had never killed her by his anger by her bedside.

In this world, Fantine had lived _his_ life. She had been high and mighty, recognized, loved and feared. She had kept her baby Cosette. Valjean had never met her. Marius had never met her. That meant, Javert calculated, that Valjean had been able to go on with his life as mayor, since Javert's suspicion had never arose because he had never convicted Fantine. Javert could have been anything-no longer police, crazy from his obsession with a man who no longer existed.

Javert knew no mercy now. He stayed bent in the mud, on elbows and knees. The children tugged at his clothes, searched the mud for money he did not have. They pulled at his hair, spilling it in frenzied curls over his sunken shoulders.

From not too far away, he felt something against his neck. The memory of a locket me may or may not have had. Fantine held it away, tantalizing.

_I have more surprises, too, love: you wait and see. _


End file.
